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‘Shark Summer’ with Dr. Andy Nosal

Summer is just around the corner, and we have big plans for it! We’re thrilled to announce a new initiative at Birch Aquarium at Scripps and introduce a new member to our team: Dr. Andy Nosal.

As our DeLaCour Fellow for Ecology & Conservation, Andy, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, will spend the next three years working with Birch Aquarium and sharing his scientific discoveries with our visitors. Andy earned his Ph.D. from Scripps in December and specializes in shark ecology, with a particular focus on La Jolla’s population of leopard sharks.

July & August 2013 will be “Shark Summer” at Birch Aquarium at Scripps. We’re celebrating our local populations of leopard sharks and their cousins with a new exhibit, dozens of shark-related public programs, and lots of interaction with Andy for our visitors.

Stay tuned for information about these programs and Andy’s research down at La Jolla Shores, where he’ll be flying a weather balloon along the shore this summer to track leopard sharks, research that has important implications for local shark conservation efforts.

5 comments to ‘Shark Summer’ with Dr. Andy Nosal

Watched your lecture and was impressed with your work. If you wish to carry out further work as per your comments on file scale salinity structure and need facilities to run some salts we have them set up here in MESOM, new SIO building across from NOAA building. Feel free to email or call me, I am in the UC directory.

Saw you on the discovery channel on top10 weirdest sharks. And you were talking about the reproduction of different sharks but my question is what is the probability that sharks are mating within its own family example if a female shark has two offspring what. Is the probability that once they mature they won’t eventually mate with each other ? Or even if they are from different generations… Is that a possibility??

Here’s what Dr. Andy Nosal had to say: It is unlikely for inbreeding to occur at least between parents and offspring. Most sharks do not mature until approximately halfway through their lifecycle, meaning once a shark reaches maturity, it’s parents will likely not be around. It would be more likely for siblings or half-siblings to inbreed. However, sharks are wide-roaming such that enough dispersal happens among members of the same “family” such that inbreeding is likely very rare.

So when you say not likely does that mean that there haven’t been studies to determine the probability of exactly how close shark are to one another within the same “Family” or because the ocean’s are so vast that’s hasn’t been a question brought up yet?? Just trying to pick your brain about sharks and ease my curiosity